Ffffffuuuuuu .... (long and fairly ranty)

[Pixilated]

I'd like to think things haven't gone quite that far ... but that may be a real case of excessive optimism on my part. I'm going to write about something that I'm uncertain about anyway so will include the follow-up as you suggest. Thanks!

[taxguykarl]

Even so, I had to twist her arm to get rid of it. I guess she saw getting rid of things--even junk--was the same as getting rid of Grandpa. 70 years of living together will do that, I guess. In the end, she relented, and I hauled all that crap to the skip.

At the risk of thread jacking:

My paternal grandmother was the same way. When it came time to move her from her isolated hovel to assisted living she would not let go. Anything made or touched it seemed by my late grandfather was sacred, needless to say it would not all fit into her apartment. Yes, she was Hoarders material.

Mother and I spent the summer helping her pack and move. As my dad was on sales calls for a couple weeks at a time and my sister was with relatives out west that summer, we made the daily two-hour trek back and forth to check our own mail, feed the cat, work our garden and pack (and haul her obvious garbage). We would arrive around noon, do some packing and disposing (my main role was heavy lifting and burning, still legal at that time) and stay the night and work 'til we could no longer stand it (typically 4 ish). Eddie Rabbit's Driving my life away was an inescapable AM hit that summer and mom quickly dubbed it our theme song. This daily routine took up at least a month and a half.

When we finally moved her (one of Dad's poker buddies was on our local housing authority board), we didn't have much left in the way of heavy furniture or stuff that she would actually miss.

[PepperElf]

My mother has already spoken to sis and I about what to do if Mom passes away before Dad does - which we rather feel is likely given Mom's cancer.

She's going to set up her will so that Sis & I get the assets instead of Dad. I'll set up an account in trust to Sis, and the money in it will be used for supporting Dad.

This way if he goes into assisted living... they can't touch the money. They have to go through us (or rather sis cos she'll be in the same area) in order to get their hands on any of it.


This, we hope, will avoid any situation where the nursing home/ assisted living company takes everything he owns etc.

[TheSHAD0W]

There's a solution to this, which is a bit expensive, though a lot of people use it (albeit not usually consciously or cold-bloodedly)...

Put it in storage.

Box it up, rent a storage room, and stick it in there. Let the people who want to keep it pay the bills on it.

And when they finally decide it's worthless/useless to hang on to, stop paying the bills, abandon it, and let the storage place sell it off.

[taxguykarl]

Box it up, rent a storage room, and stick it in there. Let the people who want to keep it pay the bills on it.

And when they finally decide it's worthless/useless to hang on to, stop paying the bills, abandon it, and let the storage place sell it off.

And let us know which episode of Storage Wars airs that auction.

[TheSHAD0W]

And let us know which episode of Storage Wars airs that auction.

No, no, geez! Not the good stuff! That, you keep. I'm talking about clothes 'n such.

[Pixilated]

If it comes to that, I'll be happy to call Storage Wars ... although I got a phone call today from the storage company my own stuff is in ... I forgot to mail them the money order after our last conversation ... ... so it may be my stuff that gets auctioned off! (Actually I fished the money order out of the depths of my purse and put it in the mail today ...)

TheSHADOW, if circumstances were otherwise, I would not hesitate to use your suggestions ... for example, if family members were demanding that I store mom's stuff in my own apartment or my own storage unit.

However ... to do that under my current circumstances would generate a brouhaha that would result in huge amounts of ill will on the part of my sister and, more importantly, my brother.

Because the thing is, I am living in mom's house. It's still legally hers, even though it's unlikely in the extreme she will ever come back to it. It has three bedrooms, a basement, and a two-car garage. With all that space, for me to dump her stuff in storage and tell brother and/or sister to pay for the storage ... there is no way I could justify that.

And even if I had all my belongings here, I wouldn't need the whole house, because this is not a permanent arrangement: once I've graduated from my program I will be looking for a place of my own, and the house will be spiffied up and sold. So even if I get my belongings out of their current storage space (hoping to do that next summer), at best 95% or more will remain boxed up in the basement and/or the garage until I am settled somewhere.

I'm now thinking that what happened is that my brother and I had similar ideas on what could be disposed of -- clothes, the old microwave in the basement, a lot of plastic kitchen utensils, etc. However, we hadn't consulted sis at all. I think we just assumed she'd have the same ideas, and she didn't. So I was preparing to get rid of stuff that, as it turns out, she thinks should be kept. I'm willing to bet 98% will end up being donated or otherwise disposed of when the three of us finally get together and go through it, but until then, it will be boxed up or otherwise stored somewhere.

I don't have a problem with keeping this stuff; I just wanted clear instructions -- it seemed I was getting one thing, verbally, from my brother and something different in writing.

[taxguykarl]

No, no, geez! Not the good stuff! That, you keep. I'm talking about clothes 'n such.

So was I.

[Pixilated]

"Good stuff" is pretty low-level here ... it's not like there's a collection of Faberge eggs in her closet, LOL. I thought we had a nice little Hummel figurine in the kitchen but ... the "Made in Japan" stamp on the bottom kinda put the kibosh on that.